I can’t see Crow in the Kansas City version of the video that I wrote about, but I’m pretty sure I spotted her in the other version (with footage from Wembley and other locales): it sure looks like her throwing back a big mane of red hair at 1:21. (Good call!)

The reason for the “This is our planet” lyric wasn’t some sort of early environmental consciousness on Michael’s part. This song was originally from the short theme-park movie Captain EO, which (I just checked Wikipedia) debuted at Disney’s Epcot Center in 1986.

Your mentioning of the single’s different and much better R&B chart results reminds me of how (again, this word) regimented label promotions were in the ’80s. The three leading pop/R&B crossover stars of the period were targeted very carefully by the labels single-by-single: Whitney Houston had at least one, maybe two R&B smashes (“Thinking About You” and “All at Once,” both ’86) that weren’t promoted to Top 40 radio at all and never appeared on the Hot 100. Michael’s sister Janet had the unusual distinction of scoring No. 1 R&B hits with every single from Control *except* the one that topped the Hot 100, “When I Think of You.” And as we see, Michael’s people started to throw a little special TLC in the direction of R&B radio when they perceived a need to shore up his cred there; “Dirty Diana,” the single just before “Another Part,” had underperformed at R&B after a string of Bad No. 1’s, and so I’m guessing that Epic didn’t mind so much when it did better at R&B than it did at pop radio. (On the Hot 100, Michael was just coming off five consecutive No. 1’s from Bad, which is still an unbeaten record.)

Last question — I don’t have time to scour the whole video, but since you just watched it, and this is a late-’80s live MJ clip, I must ask: Can you see a big-haired Sheryl Crow singing backup?